Holiday Cookie Madness Part 4: Gingerbread Sandwich Cookies

We just got home from picking Garrick up from the airport, and you know you’re in Northern Michigan when there’s a bear in your airport. Michigan chose to welcome Garrick back in style with extremely icy roads, freezing rain, and a long, slippery ride home. But we made it, and Garrick’s sure not in Phoenix anymore.

Now that Garrick’s home safe, we can continue the madness, and my next recipe is gingerbread sandwich cookies. I absolutely love ginger cookies, and these are definitely good ones. The original recipe called for buttercream in the middle, but I decided to make a cream cheese frosting instead. It was the right thing to do. They look like oatmeal cream pies, but trust me, they’re even better. They’re soft in the middle, crisp on the outside, and perfectly spicy.

Then add the egg and molasses. Try not to be disturbed by how weird the molasses smells. I usually spray the measuring cup with a bit of cooking spray before measuring the molasses so that it doesn’t take as long to come back out, because that expression about molasses in February is no joke.

Mix until well blended.

Slowly add the dry ingredients until evenly mixed.

Then bake for 10-15 minutes. Ten minutes was fine for mine. They puff up first, then fall again. Try not to faint when the fumes from these invade your house.

While the cookies cool, mix up some filling. Here are your ingredients:

Cream together the butter and cream cheese.

Then mix in the vanilla and add the powdered sugar in slowly. I used just under 2 cups because I don’t like it too sweet, but if the cookies weren’t so good, I could eat the whole bowl.

You can just spread the frosting on the cookies with a knife, but I think it’s much easier to pipe it on. I used my mom’s cake decorating kit, but a ziplock bag with the corner snipped off works just as well. Pipe the frosting most of the way out to the edge of one cookie…

then press another one on top so that the frosting oozes out to the edge.

Mmmmmmmmm. Now lock them all up in a pretty tin and put them in the big fridge outside before you eat all of them.

Cream together butter and cream cheese. Mix in vanilla and slowly add sugar.

Assembly:

When cookies have cooled, spread or pipe frosting onto the bottom of a cookie. Leave about 1/2″ to 1/4″ between the edge of the cookie and the frosting, if piping. Press another cookie on top of the frosting until it has spread to the edge of the bottom cookie.